LOWER LAKE, Calif. – Lance Christensen, the new math teacher at Carlé, began teaching math at the beginning of this year.

He began teaching at continuation schools and really enjoyed helping children recover; he wanted to continue teaching at a continuation school so he came to Carlé.

Christensen taught science before he began teaching math, if he were to teach something other than math he said he would teach science or industrial arts. However he enjoys teaching math.

He went to college as a biology major. However, he switched to electrical engineering because at the time they made more money. Also, he was already working for a company where he was doing engineering for 20 years making industrial equipment for surgery such as cameras and fixing computers used in medicine.

After he took engineering he went on the get his teaching credential and started teaching science and math. He is now taking college courses online for a master’s degree in math.

I asked him for some advice to give the students about achieving their goals. “We need to recognize the things we struggle with and push past those things to achieve ours goals, never give up on something you love or believe in,” he said.

In conclusion, Christensen is a really good teacher and a really smart guy. All of us at Carlé are glad to have such a brilliant math teacher. Thank you, Lance.

Lydia Pogue, a volunteer with Totes for Teens, visited Carlé to ask the students who received a tote what they thought was more useful and what they didn’t use so much.

She also gave the students who spoke with her forget-me-not seeds to commemorate her mother Grace Bala, who hand-knitted the hats and much more in the totes. Thank you Grace, we will always remember you.

As mentioned in the last article Jonathan and Lia visited Carlé last week, they are from the Lake Family Resource Center with a California prep program. They presented an evidence-based program called the SHARP program (sexual health adolescent risk prevention).

This program is designed to help kids and young adults make brighter decisions for their future well-being.  This includes condom use, drug and alcohol awareness, and even relationship building with your partner.

This program is really beneficial to have to educate the students at Carlé and we are really glad you (Jonathan and Lia) keep returning to us.

We at Carlé would like to give a special thanks to Dr. Barry Munitz and the Cotsen Foundation for the art of Teaching for a very generous donation of $4,000 to the media program at Carlé. Thank you so much for supporting the media program.

Dr. Munitz’s last donation helped fun a new press and all of the awards we created to thank those that helped on the Clayton fire. We were able to produce 68 plaques and 135 key chains to show our appreciation and we could not have done this without such generosity.

In addition this donation will allow us to make senior graduation plaques for each graduate.  We also fund all our sustainability awards and school contests with this.

Teacher Alan Siegel met Dr. Munitz when they were both members of the state P-16 council and have had a special relationship ever since.

Last weeks chilly winner was Ashton Legg awarded by Alan Siegel, congrats on winning hope your candle was really cool.

Last Thursday, Feb. 9, was a collaborative day, so we were let out of school early. Scoring of the writing samples about animal research were done on Thursday.

On Feb. 13 and 20 there will be no school because of Lincoln’s birthday and Presidents Day, have fun.

Olga Paselk (our schools translator and aide) returns to school from Costa Rica. Glad to have you back, Olga, we missed you.

A senior student at Carlé and former writer of the Carlé Chronicle presented her portfolio on Feb. 7 and with that Brianna Legg was able to graduate and start her new life as a college student at Woodland Community College. Congratulations Brianna we will miss you at Carlé and best of luck.

The winner of this week’s student of week was Nick Phipps. Nick has taken over the duty of writing an article about the goings on at Carlé each week.  He is a voracious reader and deep thinker who truly enjoys this special award.

Nicholas Phipps is a student at Carlé Continuation High School.